City of Redding study reduces number of homes in flood plain

The outlook has gone from mostly to partly cloudy for south Redding property owners facing expensive flood insurance mandates.

Nearly half these residents may not have to buy coverage after all, a $72,000 city-commissioned hydrologic study shows.

But hundreds more households are still in the 100-year Olney Creek flood plain and may pay as much as $1,600 annually for insurance premiums, according to the city's report.

Meanwhile, at least two dozen properties along Balaton Avenue currently outside the creek's proposed 100-year flood plain may wind up included in a revised inundation zone based on the city's study.

These properties would fall under the new insurance requirements, should the Federal Emergency Management Agency accept the city's report. The higher insurance rates would start in February or March 2011.

The city-commissioned report substantially narrows the flood zone on a proposed FEMA map that declares several Olney Creek area subdivisions at risk. But neighbors say they will keep pressuring the city on the flood plain issue as long as it remains unresolved for some property owners.

"This, in essence, still affects all property owners in the original proposed floodplain," said Jack Ratledge, an Olney Creek area resident. "So it is important that we stand together as one neighborhood to bring the situation to closure."

Redding since the early 1980s has allowed hundreds of homes on the fat finger of loamy land east of Olney Creek and west of the Sacramento River. These subdivisions have appeared since the city required the developer of Bonnyview Meadows Estates to build a dike to keep the creek away from homes on Brookside Avenue and Creekside Street during a once-in-a-century storm.

But the earthen berm is at least a foot too low and, perhaps, 600 feet too short to protect homes east of the creek under tougher FEMA standards for levees that went into effect in August 2005, just a few days before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Mississippi-Alabama gulf coast.

City officials learned nearly 18 months ago that the Olney Creek levee no longer met FEMA standards. This past January, the city persuaded FEMA to delay imposing the new flood insurance map by six months to give the city a chance to collect more detailed hydrological information.

Redding-based Pacific Hydrologic Inc. performed the Olney Creek study for the city. The firm's analysis shows the creek, swollen by a once-in-a-century storm, would still leave its banks as it flows south through Allen's Golf Course and under the bridge at Sacramento Drive, much as the proposed FEMA map shows.

Just beyond the bridge, flood water would race down Balaton onto Creekside, Mullen Parkway, Brookside and Reflection Street, according to the city's study. This flood would cover all or part of 304 lots along these streets, although the levee may lessen flooding for some homes.

The number of flooded parcels in the city-commissioned report compares to 648 lots included in FEMA's Olney Creek flood plain. That map shows Olney Creek flooding all the way to the Sacramento River south of Sacramento Drive.

Donna Briggs, an Olney Creek area resident since 1992, learned late last year at a neighborhood meeting that FEMA had decided to decertify the Olney Creek levee protecting her home.

Since that meeting, Briggs and dozens of her south side neighbors have immersed themselves in flood plain issues as they pressure city officials to bring the dike up to current standards and remove the cloud from their properties.

Briggs, Ratledge and others are frustrated that the city did not act sooner to engage FEMA on the issue, buying them more time to come up with a way to fix the levee.

City officials have said they challenged the FEMA findings as soon as they could collect the necessary technical information.

Briggs said she and her neighbors will continue pressuring the city to make the repairs needed to bring the levee up to the new FEMA standards.

"FEMA has stated, in part, if the levee is brought up to the standards that have been adopted, this floodplain remapping would go away," Briggs said.

A draft of the city's hydrologic study shows the current levee could protect homes from flooding if Olney Creek could be contained in the stream channel during a 100-year storm, said Jim Hamilton, development services director. But that would require major work on the stream channel north and south of the Sacramento Drive bridge, he said.

The city has not identified any money for this stream channel work or for shoring up the levee. The cost of this work remains unknown.

Some City Council members have proposed forming an assessment district for the Olney Creek area to fund the work. Briggs said that idea won't go far with her or her neighbors.

"Forming an assessment district to have the residents pay for the repairs of the levee is not an option we the residents want," Briggs said.